Grant David McCracken Quotes

• The future is going to be stranger and more various and more dynamic than anything people can imagine now. We will be extraordiarily tested. I wish us the best of luck!

  Grant David McCracken

  People, Luck, Wish

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Often it takes more time to explain a task than to do it yourself, and when you do it yourself there is no data lost in transmission. We have something to learn about how communication works in these settings. Sometimes it takes a really long time to communicate the full meaning of what we want to say.

  Grant David McCracken

  Communication, Long, Sometimes

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Finding the right people and giving power and letting them go find value in the world. That's got to be toughest. Really, its like the Spanish court in the 16th century saying, um, take this ship and go see what you can find. You have to believe in your sailors!

  Grant David McCracken

  Believe, People, Giving

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Often creativity comes from a very pragmatic kind of "well, what if we try this. How about this." You set some parameters and then work through the variations. It's hard to see something as a concept. It literally comes out of the hands on experiment.

  Grant David McCracken

  Creativity, What If, Trying

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• I think the corporations if it wants to be truly responses to the changes taking place in the world is going to have to learn how to be much more porous to the world. And that is ever so difficult. We are good at boundaries and systems. We need to learn how to open those up.

  Grant David McCracken

  Thinking, World, Boundaries

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• That culture is a a critical resource the organization ignores. Competely mystifying. The organization continues to act as if culture were dark matter, something essentially inaccessible to us. When in fact there is an ancient discipline called anthropology that's pretty good at thinking about it.

  Grant David McCracken

  Dark, Thinking, Discipline

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Business schools do most things very well. They are just not comprehensive and what they miss are things like culture and creativity and a certain kind of pattern recognition that comes easily to people trained in the liberal arts.

  Grant David McCracken

  Art, Creativity, School

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original expectations. More often than not, resistance is cultural in nature but the real cause of lots of resistance often is that however much a team might say that it wants to change, the old assumptions are woven, invisibly, deep within the corporate culture, and from this staging ground they act invisibly to sustain the old order. Finding the assumption out and then rooting them out is a special skill. It calls for assumption hunters, I call them.

  Grant David McCracken

  Real, Team, Fall

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• You need to begin where people are. You can't punt ideas or innovations in from the 40 yard line. And yes, the work should feel so collaborative that it should feel like the end result belongs to everyone. Your best moment as a consultant is when your client plays your idea back to you as their idea. Your job: to nod sagely and say, "that's an excellent idea.".

  Grant David McCracken

  People, Innovation, Moments

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Keeping the ship on course will be the first and most difficult order of business. Everyone is going to be piloting their organization through very high waters where things can change in an instant.

  Grant David McCracken

  Water, Difficult, Instant

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• The world of the consumer, the sheer innovation and dynamism of our culture has never been easy for marketing to keep up with, but now these are suddenly faster and much more powerful. We need a new idea and practice of marketing and of the brand.

  Grant David McCracken

  Powerful, Innovation, Marketing

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• The University of Chicago is an astounding place. It's Yeshiva, a priesthood. It gives you an education, but more than that it gives you a mission. Oh, and an arrogance. But being Canadian helps with that.

  Grant David McCracken

  Giving, Arrogance, Helping

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Innovation got hip. It got cool. I prefer the people who investigate the world out a brute sense of curiosity, a fundamental sense of play.

  Grant David McCracken

  People, Innovation, Curiosity

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

• Now that everyone is reinventing and innovating, advantage goes to those who keep at it. We need to greet even success with humility.

  Grant David McCracken

  Humility

  Source: bobmorris.biz

  4 Copy quote

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